"There is, in all great poets, a..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.”

“I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.”

“The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.”

“There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.”

“I have my books And my poetry to protect me; I am shielded in my armor, Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island.”

“An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.”

“Wisdom is a blaze, kindled by a leaping spark.”

“And wisdom is a butterflyAnd not a gloomy bird of prey.”

“He who holds on to the Way seeks no excess. Since he lacks excess, he can grow old in no need to be renewed.”